BERING, VITUS JONASSEN (1681-1741) Danish navi gator, was born at Horsens, Jutland, in 1681, and died on Bering island, Dec. 1741. Joining the Danish navy early, he went in 1703, on a voyage to the East Indies; the following year he entered the Russian navy, and served in the war against Sweden. In 1724 Peter the Great appointed Bering to conduct an expedi tion to north-eastern Siberia, with the object of discovering whether Asia and America were divided. This expedition set forth from St. Petersburg (Leningrad) on Feb. 5, 1725, after the death of Peter, and proceeding by land across Siberia to Kamchatka, built ships and sailed on July 14, 1728, from the mouth of the Kamchatka river along the north-eastern coast of Siberia as far as 67°N. Deciding that Asia and America were not connected and that it would be inadvisable to sail further north, Bering turned back, and returning by the way he came, arrived in St. Petersburg again in March 173o. But the result of his journey was considered unsatisfactory, and he persuaded the Empress Anne to send him on a second expedition in The members of this party arrived in detachments at Okhotsk, confusion and quarrels among the officers and obstructive policy of the local authorities in Siberia delayed matters, and it was not until 174o that the two boats, the "St. Peter" and the "St. Paul" left Okhotsk, reaching Petropavlovsk on Oct. 6. From this har bour they sailed on June 4, 1741, Bering in the "St. Peter" and his lieutenant, Chirikov in the "St. Paul." The two ships soon separated, and Bering sailed soutn-east, in search of Gamaland, which he failed to find, and almost parallel to the Aleutian islands without knowing it. Soon after sighting the volcano of St. Elias in Alaska, he landed on an island afterwards named St. Elias, thus discovering America from the east. On the return voyage Bering was taken ill, the ship lost her bearings in a fog, and the expedi tion was obliged to spend six months on an uninhabited island, afterwards called Bering island, near Kamchatka, where Bering died in December, a month after they had landed.
See P. Lauridsen, Russian Explorations, Vitus Bering: the Discoverer of Bering Strait, trans. by J. E. Olson (Chicago, 1889) ; F. A. Golder, Bering's Voyages (bib.) pub. by the Amer. Geog. Assoc. 1925).